


ask to be unbroken

by unorgaynized



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Empire of gold spoilers, Extra Scenes characters, Gen, Post EOG, children can be MEAN guys, children can be so tough, ft minor insecurities about talking to children, more tags to come, nahri against all odds got lucky, sometimes you just start building your own family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25272169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unorgaynized/pseuds/unorgaynized
Summary: Zaynab could make out little else about him-- his age, his dress, his background, for he was entirely covered in blood, his black eyes standing out wide and haunted in his dirty face. The darkness of his eyes threw her. “Daeva?” she whispered to Subha.The doctor shook her head. “Shafit, but he owes his life to one of them."Eight months after Daevabad is freed, Botros finds his way to Nahri.
Relationships: Nahri e-Nahid & Botros, Nahri e-Nahid & Botros (Daevabad)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	ask to be unbroken

“Banu Nahida!” The young voice rolled over the quiet protests and murmurs. “Banu Nahida!”

Even now, nine months after Daevabad had fallen, there were still so many injured, so many seeking her specifically. Not all of them were kind-- some still held onto the Daeva prejudice as if they were drowning. They saw a traitor living in her skin, bound about her blood. Even though they might have been killed under Manizheh’s orders, that her brother had fallen in love with a shafit woman was still unthinkable, that their daughter had passed herself off as a pureblood worse.

Ali always cautioned her around her healing. Ali, more than anyone, could understand, with his Marid eyes, Marid powers, Marid scars. Prince Alizayd had been a hero to his men, known in the streets for his efforts to help the shafit and the lower classes, as strong in economic theory as he was with his zulfiqar and in his faith. With his Geziri eyes washed away and his fire burnt out, many of the upper class who would have looked to him with respect if he’d stayed djinn now saw him with distrust.

Still, this was only a child. Nahri was not naive enough to think children were innocent: she had, after all, used her age to slip among a crowd, tease out secrets, steal her way through to the next. She’d seen children used to spread poisons, sow distrust. Ali would give any child the benefit of the doubt, even as they cut his coinpurse away, trying to help them better their life and refusing to report it. 

But Nahri was no longer the walled-off girl she’d been in Cairo, or during her first months in Daevabad. She was a healer of the streets, a _true_ healer rather than a political prize. She was the Banu Nahida, a title she wore now with more comfort than during her marriage to the emir. Living with and loving a different prince made it easier.

“I’m coming,” she called out, her hands skimming through her tools. The child hadn’t sounded like they were in too much pain, but pliers were always an easy thing to bring, in case she needed to remove something. Needles, catgut, scalpels-- she’d established a rhythm now. While she was still able to afford any healing tools she wanted, she liked sending her extras off to other doctors. She didn’t need Subha implying that Nahri was keeping the best for herself, rather than sharing with their trainees. 

Her kit secured and configured for what she might need for a mild-to-moderate injury, Nahri wrote a careful note to Ali that she would be with a patient before heading to the door. She doubted it would take too much time-- the child hadn’t seemed woozy, had still had quite a clear voice, and there was little enough fear rounding the edges of their call. 

She wasn’t surprised to find the child able to walk, though they were pacing nervously. Tense, one shoulder hitched as if they were expecting to be hit. Skinny-- the same stray-cat ribs that she’d known in Cairo. Hungry, desperate eyes, the same she’d had.

Black eyes. Daeva eyes. The same eyes that stared at her in the mirror, paired with curving shafit ears, his skin lacking the glimmer that might have helped him pass as something closer to pureblood.

“They say you’re shafit,” the child said, addressing their words now to their holey shoes. 

“I am,” Nahri agreed. She’d announced it among the surviving Daeva, among other nobles who remained in Daevabad. She’d told Jamshid and Muntadhir to mention that she was shafit, to not hide it. She wanted everyone to know, wanted to honor her parents and work for her mother’s memory. She lived in the shafit district, not too far from Subha. Her favorite, closest neighbor now. It wasn’t purely shafit now; there was Ali living with her, and djinn who had revealed shafit lovers, moving in with them. 

“You’re a Daeva.” Their voice was strong, for all that it was still aimed at the ground, that the child couldn’t meet her face. Nahri wasn’t going to push it-- yet. Push too hard, and the child flees. She’d been that child once.

“I’m Nahri,” she said instead. “I’m Nahri, and my grandfather is an Egyptian cook. He works at the palace.”

“Abu Duriya was always kind to me.” The child met her face, face anxious and stubborn. “My name’s Botros. I think he knew.”

Botros --six, maybe? seven? Eight at most-- knew her grandfather. Nahri settled herself down, sitting. She could see a few scratches and bruises on his arms and feet, already half-healed. A brown scab decorated a knuckle, showing his blood was more red than black. The boy’s heart pounded, though Nahri would wager it was from nerves rather than injuries. His breathing was good, his lungs clear. “I can ease those, if you want.” She held out a hand, letting him choose.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not-- I’m not.” His eyes darted back and forth, almost searching for an escape before he hastily sat down, dipping a quick bow. Nahri smoothed her face, trying not to wince. He’d sat, that was the important part.

“I never knew my father. Mama always said he was a full Agnivanshi to everyone, like her grandfather. She had dark brown eyes, and said he had tin.” Thin fingers entwined and untwined, a dance of dexterity. He’d do well slipping his hands into pockets. Maybe that was how he was living now. “She said it was lucky I was darker than my father.”

“Was your great-grandfather Agnivanshi?” Nahri kept her voice gentle, non-judgemental. Let him speak.

“He was an Agnivanshi shafit like my grandfather, I think.” Botros shrugged. “But he could have been anyone. We mix a lot, because no one cares about us.”

The simple truth, said so evenly. It made sense that shafit had more freedom to marry others not from the same tribe, if the shafit intermarried among each other more. All had to be in Daevabad before, after all. Being shafit meant more than the pureblood ancestor’s tribe, distant as it might be.

“We’re working to change that,” Nahri said carefully. “It won’t be allowed to go back to that.”

Botros glanced at her through the corner of his eyes, unbelieving. Nahri knew how incredible it sounded, coming from someone who had hidden her shafit heritage for most of her time in Daevabad. Like Subha had said, she’d been privileged, closing her eyes and heart to keep herself safe. 

“My mother’s mother was Geziri,” he said quickly. “So my mother chose a Geziri relic. We lived in the servants' quarters and most of us had Geziri relics there.” His mouth closed, opened again, pressed tightly together. He closed his eyes, swallowing. Nahri politely ignored the tears at the corners of his eyes. “She coulda chosen something else, like I was going to. But she wanted that, because they didn’t look alike and her mother died young, she told me.”

Nahri could see it then, as she ran through the palace. Screaming for relics to be removed, hearing of Zaynab and Aqisa’s gallop through the city. Bodies piled up. The copper mist aiming towards Ghassan’s relic and stealing in through his ear, copper shards bursting out. His mother hadn’t been one of the lucky ones. Botros didn’t have a pierced ear, carried no Geziri relic on him, even if he could have afforded one. After his mother, she doubted he’d ever wear even an earring.

“A Daeva scholar helped me get away and I got over the wall. That’s how I escaped. I don’t know if he knew. He pretended I was his nephew though, but I’d never seen him before.” He chewed on his lip and the skin broke, a trickle of red stark against his mouth. 

Nahri restrained herself from lifting her still-outstretched arm to heal it. “Did anyone?”

“That my father was Daeva? I think Abu Duriya did. Mama only told me last year, a few months before Navasatem. She told me I couldn’t tell anyone. Made me _swear_.” Botros met her gaze, his black eyes wide. “I haven’t told anyone. I promised. But I thought, since you’re a Daeva, and you’re a shafit, maybe it would be fine. Maybe she wouldn’t mind.”

 _You lived in the palace_. Nahri was almost chilled at the thought, for all that it was a rare day of few mists. She’d lived there as a shafit pretending to be pureblood, and he’d lived there as a shafit pretending not to be Daeva. She had never noticed him, though would she had? Lost in her grief and her anger, would she have spared a glance for the Daeva-eyed boy who was so clearly shafit, their blood equally red? Would that have been her life, had her mother been successful fleeing Manizheh?

How it must have been, relying on human bloodlines to account for his Daeva eyes. What had it been? Some bored Daeva man, a servant woman who'd had some fun? Had it been like her parents? Or was it a cruel man, and a woman who couldn't say _No_? How many others like them existed, half-hidden and veiled between partial truths, protected only by the denial that no Daeva would lay down with a shafit?

“I’m sure she would be honored that you kept your promise,” Nahri said carefully. She had never had the gift with children Ali had, the charm Muntadhir or Zaynab had, even the charisma of Dara. Nor did she have Fiza’s strange appeal to children, delighting them and scandalizing their parents in equal measure. Razu was adored as well, and Elashia well-respected. Even Subha’s toddling daughter preferred Aqisa, the only person who was possibly worse with children out of a hospital bed. “You made it in a different time.” 

His skinny, street cat bones. His young age. His heritage-- a difficult thing, certainly. He would have a much more difficult time than Nahri would if he ran into malcontents, but….

Ali wouldn’t mind, she was sure of it. They had rooms enough-- her room, his room, the room she made her grandfather take the nights he didn’t have work when he came to visit, the rooms if patients came by. “Would you like to stay with us? Gedi comes over often, and I promise, no one would be able to harm you.”

His mouth twitched. “Why would you do that.”

Flat, no inflection of a question. He didn’t trust-- and nor would she. “Do you have another place to go?” Botros started to nod, and then seemed to think better of it, turning it into a shake. “If you’re living on the streets, you haven’t found a better place, haven’t found work, haven’t found an--” 

They needed good orphanages, _better_ orphanages. From what Ali had told her, half the shafit went to poor homes, served as little more than indentured servants, or were sold to purebloods as slaves. Nahri wouldn’t have trusted the shafit orphanages herself, even now. They’d have to work on that; she’d tell Ali and have him help her with a plan before they brought it to Jamshid and Muntadhir. Maybe Subha could give some advice? Or Fiza?

“You’ll stay with me,” Nahri said. “It will only be as long as you’re comfortable, until you find someplace better.” That would-- scare him off perhaps, so she hastily added, “it’s my responsibility. Shafit like us should stick together, no?”

Botros blinked. “I’m a good sweeper,” he started. “I’m small, I can fit into all sorts of nooks, I’ll earn my keep--”

“You can earn your keep by,” Nahri’s mind spun, trying to find something he might accept. “You’ll be my assistant, in the hospital. I’ll train you as an apprentice.” Never had she pictured one so young, admittedly, but it would keep in a safe practice, under her eye. Or under Ali’s eye? Children and sharp tools rarely mixed well as Subha was fond of reminding her, but she did need something he might accept. Ali could perhaps give him lessons on what tools she used and what they were? They might bore him if he had little interest in becoming a doctor, but they would keep him safe all the same.

Botros set his mouth and nodded. Finally, he reached out, taking Nahri’s hand. “I’ll live with you, then.”

Nahri smiled warmly, folding her fingers around his smaller hand. “I think Gedu could be convinced to come tonight. He’ll be happy to see you.”

**Author's Note:**

> potato heads, thanks for encouraging me with this! sorry i made NSFW soft, whoops. maybe in a few chapters?
> 
> Botros as a character is fascinating-- if he is part-Daeva, if he's simply Daeva-passing with his dark eyes. While the latter is perhaps more likely, I thought the former more interesting to write. Though I might also do an AU of this where his eyes are a coincidence? 
> 
> Juju, thank you so much for the help with what Nahri (and others) might call her as-of-yet unnamed grandfather! @shannon please give us a NAME we're begging you.


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